Conversations in the Impala
by celinenaville
Summary: Short little drabbles, each focusing on heart-to-hearts Dean and Sam have whilst driving. They have no particular order, just snippets of where the boys are emotionally during the different seasons.
1. Chapter 1

**Just a quick piece that floated into my head in between updating Locking Horns and Faults in the Foundation. Check them out for something a bit longer. As always, reviews are gold.  
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Sam glanced at Dean's profile as he opened Baby up on the back road. The scenery sped by, the shadows cast by the trees making a dizzying, constantly changing pattern of light and dark across his brother's face.

"Dean, if you could go back, would you change any of it?"

Dean didn't answer right away. In fact, he wasn't sure if he'd heard him at all. Finally, in a voice that sounded far too world weary and gruff for his still somewhat boyish features, he replied, "I'd change all of it, Sammy."

Sam paused. Thought about it long and hard. Ran through his long list of regrets and mistakes and broken promises and pains he never dreamed they would have to deal with in this lifetime.

"Yeah, me too," he said.


	2. Chapter 2

"Dean, when did we stop caring about people? "

Dean arched an eyebrow and shot his brother a puzzled glance before he looked back out of the windshield. "Sammy, what the hell are you talking about?" He asked gruffly, his once tenor voice carrying a note of whiskey and sleepless nights.

"I mean," Sam said slowly, like he were talking to an idiot. "When did we stop caring about people?" The sharp planes of his face were illuminated by street lights as they passed.

"We care about people."

"No." Sam said with surety. "We don't. Somehow saving people, hunting things, just became hunting things. I mean you remember when it was so _hard_ to gank a person who was possessed by a demon? Now we just slaughter them. Don't even think twice. Like they're as good as dead the minute a demon takes them for a ride."

"Dean grunted an acknowledgement and ran a hand along the stubble of his chin.

"So when did we stop caring?"

"I think around the time you stopped cutting your hair."

"Haha. I think maybe it was around the time we became pawns in some sort of unholy chess match between angels and demons?"

"Yeah," Dean said. "Around the time you stopped cutting your hair."

Sam opened his mouth to protest and then shut it again. It was his older brother's usual asinine way of seeing things...but... Sam pushed his fingers through his hair and snorted.

...Dean was right.


	3. Chapter 3

It was one of those rare days where in the course of the afternoon, Dean got tired of listening to the same cassette tapes and turned on the radio.

 _Eve of Destruction_ blared at them from the speakers. Dean's hand hesitated on the dial. Paused, considered. Let it play.

Sam looked over at him. This had been a John Winchester favorite, one that he didn't have on cassette.

Dean's eyes were contemplative.

"Do you still think of Dad?" Sam asked.

Dean paused, stole a sideways glance at his brother, the strong lines of his jaw tightening. "Do you? " He asked.

Sam shrugged. "Yeah...yeah I do...From time to time."

Dean nodded tightly.

"That's doesn't answer my question. Do you think about him?"

Dean was silent. Then quietly, his hands tightening on the wheel. "Every damn day."

Sam couldn't hide his shock. "Really?"

"That surprises you? "

"Yeah. You never mention him."

"Not much to say."

Sam kept studying Dean through his long hair. He brushed it back with a nervous gesture. "I didn't know. I...don't that often."

"I loved him more."

Sam's knee-jerk reaction was to protest, but then he realized that his brother's sentiment was probably true. The thought made his throat close.

"I just understood him in a way that you never did, S'mmy." A beat of silence as if his brother were considering which chinks in his armor to reveal. Then finally, "I wish I hadn't."

"What?" Sam wrinkled his nose in disbelief. " Why?"

"Because then it wouldn't hurt so much."

Dean turned his eyes to the road and changed the station.


	4. Chapter 4

Sam shifted a little, folding his legs up to avoid kicking Baby's rear window with a steel-toed work boot. He sighed and adjusted his make-shift pillow.

He knew that Dean, resting in the front, didn't have quite his height and bulk- but lying in her was still a tight fit.

"Not quite as comfortable as when we were, like, twelve and sixteen, huh?" Sam asked.

There was a long enough silence that Sam thought maybe Dean had immediately dropped off to sleep. Not like that didn't happen on occasion since he liked to habitually run himself into the ground and survive off coffee and alcohol fumes.

Then Dean's voice floated from the front seats. "She feels like home to me, Sammy."

Sam shifted himself again on the leather upholstery until his hip settled into the slight indentation it had made there over the years.

"Yeah. She does." He said.


	5. Chapter 5

The speedometer climbed past 80 and Sam raised an eyebrow at his brother. "Hey, Mario Andretti. You wanna ease off a little?"

"Huh? Oh." Dean eased his leaden foot off of the gas and Baby began to coast, she wasn't slowing but at least she wasn't gaining speed.

"Let's hit that rest stop, okay, I gotta take a leak."

Dean took the exit. Baby's tires weaved a bit erratically until they slid to a stop.

Sam got out, closed the door and leaned his back against it. He wasn't looking forward to the confrontation.

"S'mmy, hit the head and let's go, man."

Sam walked around to the driver's side and opened the door. "How much have you had to drink?"

Dean looked up at him, the surprise evident on his face. "I can drink and drive Sam, do it all the time."

"Yeah, well right now you can't- so slide over and let me drive." Sam shouldered into him and Dean found himself being physically pushed into the opposite seat. He let out a protesting squeak.

Sam shut the door. "How long is this gonna keep up, man?"

Dean sat in sullen silence, fuming at the question.

" _Answer me_. How long, Dean?"

Dean shot him a look of wounded anger and crossed his arms.

Sam shook his head and started the car.

They'd driven in stony silence for a few miles before Dean spoke. "As long as it has to."

 **Thanks for all the great feedback last chapter, you guys. These are coming to me fast and furiously now that I'm procrastinating on Hexes Redux. ;)**


	6. Chapter 6

"You ever want to go back, Sammy?"

Sam looked up from the lore book he was studying and brushed his long hair out of his face. He pondered cutting it into bangs again, decided it made him look too boyish.

"Go back where?"

"To college."

 _Stanford University_ was a lifetime ago.

Several lifetimes, _literally_ , some part of his mind quipped.

Where the hell had Dean even pulled that question from?

"Don't you think that ship has sailed?" Sam raised his eyebrows.

"Yeah." Dean countered. "But would you... if you could?"

Sam thought for a moment.

If he could erase all this crap and terror and suffering go back to Stanford to start over, would he? Of course. In a second.

But if he had the opportunity to go back now, when he was nearly thirty, after _all_ he'd been through? It seemed like a joke that he had ever thought he could have some degree of normalcy.

"This is my life now, Dean." He replied.

He saw Dean sneak a glance his way. "Yeah." Dean said. "I guess it is."

 **Hey guys, if you like this, check out Horse Sense. :)**


	7. Chapter 7

Dean's knuckles whitened on the wheel.

 _Blood_ , _gore, screaming agony, white hot pain._

It all washed through his mind's eye so clearly that he could almost see it transposed over the traffic light before him. His foot stiffened on the brake. He closed his eyes. Tried to reassure himself.

 _Not there now. Not there now. Home. Fine._

"Dean, light is green." Sam's voice broke through the memory, flashback, whatever-the-hell-it-was and Dean hit the gas.

He could feel Sam's concerned brow-furrowed expression without even having to turn his head.

"You're distracted. What are you thinking about?" Sam asked.

"The tits on that blonde back there."

That did it. Shut the questioning right down.

Sam huffed and eye rolled.

Dean smiled.

Safe for now.


	8. Chapter 8

"You realize you're Luke and I'm Han, right?"

Sam's head snapped up from what he was reading and he wrinkled his forehead. "Huh?"

"Luke Skywalker and Han Solo..." Dean took his hand off the steering wheel to gesticulate pointlessly. "You're the goody two-shoes with the dark side powers and I'm the awesome roguish scoundrel."

"Sidekick." Sam said clearly.

"What?"

"You're the rougish scoundrel sidekick. It's Luke's story."

Dean considered. Bit his lip. "Yeah well no one likes Luke."

Sam snorted. "I like Luke."

"Yeah. You and no one else."

Sam snapped the leather bound book on his lap shut. He looked up at Dean through his mop of hair. The bangs had started to grow out a little.

"Does that make this the Falcon?"

Dean's expression lit up. "Yeah. Yeah it does!" He patted the dash. "You my girl, Baby? Huh?"

"You mean your outdated hunk of junk."

"Dude, don't you dare."

Sam smirked enough so that one dimple showed as he tried to repress the smile. "Oh I'm sorry. Did she make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs?"

"Shut up, Sam."


	9. Chapter 9

The two young men were quiet and Baby was carrying a definite weight from the passenger side. Dean resisted asking what was wrong, knew that silence would drag it out of Sam eventually, whenever he finally decided he wanted to talk about it.

There was a small huff of breath and Dean's eyes slid covertly to his brother. A piece of Sam's bangs, long grown past his eyes, had fallen forward and it hung in front of his brother's sloped nose. "You know Dean, my whole life I've tried to _do_ good. Tried to _be_ good." He paused, simmering between self-pity and anger. "...and every time it's just blown up in my face."

Dean narrowed his eyes. "Sometimes you make bad choices."

He could feel his brother shut down at the judgment. He felt a small hint of satisfaction at Sam's hurt. After all the headache and heartache Sam had caused in the past few months...after starting the goddamned _apocalypse_ , some small part of Dean just wanted to hurt him back.

Sam went quiet. Didn't counter with _sometimes you make bad choices too._ He just swallowed it.

Dean warred with himself for a moment.

"Look, that is just what happens to every good person, Sam. They do their best and shit just blows up in their face." He drove silently for a moment and then added. "Maybe that's why people choose to be bad."

He could feel Sam's look from across the car.

His brother's startled, unspoken agreement.

 **Working on a lot of stuff right now. Check back soon. _Burning the Primrose Path_ is up now as well as a fic I co-wrote under Celine. Mariamo called _Personal Demons._**


	10. Chapter 10

Dean finally got tired of listening to the Bob Seger tape and glanced over at his brother. Sam's head was bent studiously over some hard covered book he'd picked up from God knows where. "What are you reading over there, nerd boy?"

Sam answered with a huff, his partially grown out bangs falling over the slope of his high forehead. "It's about memory. How children don't really remember things until age four."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "That's stupid." He watched the landscape glide by them. "I remember lotsa things before friggin' four."

Sam nodded. "I think I do too." His forehead wrinkled. "I'm pretty sure I remember crapping my pants."

Dean's eyes lit with mischief. "Well, that probably happened yesterday, so..."

Sam gave a reluctant huff of amusement, turned his eyes up from the book. "What's your first memory?"

Dean fell silent, the gears of his mind visibly turning, fraught with pictures. "Mom. I think...Smiling at me in the living room of the old house." His voice was fond. "Just an image of her with a big round stomach. Your fault, Sammy."

Sam snorted. "Yeah. I think that was Dad's fault."

Dean's eyes tracked sideways again to read Sam's expression. "How about you?"

Sam's gaze turned inward. "I'm the same way. It's just an image...stained gold shag carpet and a whiskey glass and Dad's leg. He had on a pair of jeans. He was at a chipped laminate wood table...I remember sort of looking at it and looking up and he was cleaning his rifle."

Dean fell silent.

Sam turned his head to watch him, genuinely puzzled. "What?"

"Nothing." Dean's shoulders were tight for a minute before he smirked. "Did you at least drink the whiskey like any self-respecting Winchester?"

Sam snorted. "I think I decided to get a later start on the alcoholism than age two."

Dean shook his head in mock disapproval. "Your loss, Sammy. Your loss."

"Yeah," Sam looked out the window. "My loss."


	11. Chapter 11

Dean threw his duffle in the back and slid into the impala, sunglasses pulled over his eyes. He leaned against the passenger side window.

Sam ducked in the driver's side. "Hey man. You ready to roll? Just checked out."

Dean grumbled and closed his eyes, though it was obscured by the shades.

Sam nodded knowingly and slid in behind the wheel. He held out his palm. "Keys."

Dean handed them to him.

Sam stuck them in the ignition and looked at his disheveled brother. "Late night last night? You never made it back to the motel."

"Yeah."

Sam started the car and pulled out, leaving the motel behind in a cloud of dust. He smiled indulgently, his dimples showing. "Was she pretty?"

"Yeah." Dean answered in a gruff monosyllable.

"Well that sounds enthusiastic." Sam ventured a look.

"I've lost my mojo, Sammy."

"Your mojo?"

Dean's expression looked defeated. He looked away out the window, face shadowed with his sunglasses. "Got her all riled up and Little Dean didn't get the invite to the main event. "

Sam's brows raised. "You couldn't get it up?"

 _"Shh!_ God, don't say that!" Came the horrified response.

"Um. Why not?" Sam changed lanes.

 _"He'll hear you._ " Dean hissed. "It might become a pattern."

"Dean," Sam's huff was derisive. "You're so friggin ridiculous sometimes."

"The spark is gone. From here on out it's Viagra and prostate problems."

Sam blinked, slowed the car at a stop light. "Dude, I can tell you were hitting the alcohol. You smell like a brewery."

Dean turned his head toward him. "Well, duh. Can't hook up sober."

"Well how much did you drink?"

"Dunno... A drink... or 10."

Sam snorted and shook his head. "Dean, are you complaining to me about whiskey dick?"

Dean looked startled. His mouth opened silently and then he shut it again. "Yeah...I guess I am."

The light turned green. Sam shook his head, put his foot on the gas and drove away.


	12. Chapter 12

Sam leaned his head against the glass window of the passenger side door and gritted his teeth. The impala hit a bump and Sam's forehead smacked against the glass with a dull thump. He lifted his head up, leaving a smear of oil on the glass.

Dean shot him his usual surreptitious glance. "Dude. Clean that grease smear off later."

"Yeah." Sam replied dully.

Dean lifted his eyes at the tone, his expression suddenly sharp. "You okay?"

"Stomach ache."

Dean sighed. "Flu?"

"Dunno." Sam replied with a slight edge of pain to his voice. "Think it's bad diner food."

"You gonna barf? If you're gonna barf, do it outside my car." Dean's tone was breezy, almost dismissive.

Sam cleared his throat. "Not gonna barf," he said miserably.

"Uh huh." Dean replied, clearly not convinced.

Sam's jaw had gone tight and he was breathing through his nose in short puffs.

Dean swung off the road with a sigh.

"What are you doing?" Sam asked.

"Giving you time to rest. Go lay in the back."

Sam was about to protest but stopped. He understood the unspoken short hand. He understood what his brother was saying: _it's okay Sammy. I'll take care of you._


	13. chapter 13

Wow," Sam said, leaning back against the car seat. He shook his head.

"What?" Dean glanced sideways through his long lashes, then turned his eyes back to the road. "You just realize girls have boobs or somethin?"

Sam gave him a half amused, half derisive huff through his nose. "No." He blinked. "But we just passed that sign for the themed motel back there and I just got a really strong memory of Dad."

"Huh?" Dean glanced over his shoulder, as if that would tell him something. "That hooker motel we just passed?"

"Yeah, we ended up in one when the car broke down. Don't you remember? Ours had an Oriental Pleasure Palace theme or something."

Dean laughed. "Yeah. Yeah I do."

Sam smirked and shook his head. "We liked the fake satin sheets. They were slippery. We wrapping ourselves up in them like burritoes and sliding

off the bed."

"I do remember that." Dean still had a reflective smile. "See, it wasn't all bad, Sammy. Was it?"

"No." Sam agreed. "It wasn't. There was always you."


End file.
